ALFA Field Notes

NVIDIA Brings AI Manufacturing Home: America's Industrial Might Meets Technological Leadership

Yesterday, it was announced that the world’s leading chip company will manufacture AI supercomputers entirely on American soil for the first time. This is physical infrastructure of American technological dominance coming home. Within four years, NVIDIA plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and driving trillions in economic security for decades to come.

The scale is staggering:

• NVIDIA’s leading-edge Blackwell chips are already in production at TSMC's Arizona plants

• Over one million square feet of manufacturing space commissioned across Arizona and Texas

• Mass production ramping up within 12-15 months

"The engines of the world's AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.

This announcement represents exactly what America needs: bringing critical tech manufacturing back to our shores while advancing our technological edge. The Blackwell platform – NVIDIA's most powerful AI architecture ever – will power the "gigawatt AI factories" that form the backbone of America's AI leadership.

By reshoring critical AI infrastructure manufacturing, America strengthens both its supply chain resilience and innovation ecosystem. From here at ALFA, we commend Jensen Huang and the NVIDIA team for their commitment to de-risking the AI supply chain and investing in semiconductor manufacturing in America.

The Future of Manufacturing is Automation — Supported by American Workers

Speaking of the future of reshoring, Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens writes in Pirate Wires that a full-scale American manufacturing resurgence must lean into automation.

A frequent critique of increased domestic manufacturing is that America simply doesn’t have the workforce to do the jobs. A past clip of Dave Chappelle’s standup recently made the rounds on social media where he said “I want to wear Nike’s, I don’t want to make them.”

But Stephens’ essay suggests this is an outdated mode of thinking. Automation creates the modern factory, fit for the modern American worker — from weapons manufacturers to yes, even shoe companies.

The idea that tech innovation leaves people permanently unemployable has never been true. Innovation has always created more jobs than it’s destroyed. And these new positions are skilled enough to sustain a middle class income, but accessible enough that displaced workers can be reskilled to fill them.

Stephens’ framing is that the current strategy (tariffs) to incentivize more American manufacturing is not enough to support the long-term competitiveness of new factories. “Production-side improvements” is key. And those improvements will come at the hands of robots and humans.

Military Resilience

One of the most important aspects of energy technology is the resiliency it produces. That is particularly true for our military. The energy supply chain within our armed forces is extremely vital. In a piece last summer, Andreessen Horowitz’s David Ulevitch wrote:

“Logistics wins wars, and military logistics today means moving fuel — a lot of it. … Our armed forces may dedicate more than half of their logistics tonnage to transporting fuel for planes, trucks, warships, and bases. This is of constant concern to strategists. Without fuel, you can’t fight. But getting energy to the frontlines can be incredibly costly and dangerous.”

Streamlining these fuel logistics should be a critical concern for our military, General James Mattis commented in 2006.

Of course, drilling and operating oil and gas wells throughout the world is not a viable option for our warfighters. But energy technology such as advanced nuclear microreactors — that can be transported via shipping container — would greatly reduce the need of constantly moving mass amounts of petroleum products while also strengthening our resiliency and readiness.

Now, the military is taking steps in that direction. The Defense Innovation Unit has selected eight companies — including Oklo, Kairos, XEnergy, and Radiant — to offer designs and test their technology to support operations at military installations

This type of military investment will hopefully not only make it to the bases on the battlefield, but also prove an energy source that’s good for the largest single consumer of energy is good for our citizens as well.